[Closed] Marino custom frame - some progress!

Looks great!

Is it getting paint?

The drawing doesn't have much clearance between the tyre and seat tube, was that intentional?

It’s getting paint in the U.K. when I’ve got it here. It’s going royal candy blue with chunky metal flake underneath it so it should be very sparkly!

It’s a 40th present for me effectively, hence the head badge.

I think the tyre clearance is just the drawing - I’ve asked for it to have enough clearance for upto a 2.8” tyre. Going to be running a 2.6” Forekaster in the rear and 2.6 Magic Mary upfront. 140mm Pike Ultimate fork.

I’m 5’9 so it should end up being nice and lively but still stable on steeper stuff.

Good to see you're getting some progress on it. Apparently my frame is finished now, I'm just waiting on pictures. I also got told it would ship this week so fingers crossed they'll be on their way soon.

Your frame looks like it will be awesome!

@justaname - I think my frame plus 1 other were the last to be finished prior to the shipment leaving Peru. Not sure what the progress of the other frame is / what kind of frame it is - but hopefully it’s moving along as quickly as mine is.

I’m hoping my paint guy doesn’t take too long to do my frame - he won’t have to do much prep as it’ll arrive oiled but no lacquer. Just going to need a few layers of different paints to get the effect I want 1 but having decals from Marino which will just go under the lacquer - rather than having ‘Marino’ painted on. Saves a bit of paint cost / time that way.

Glad to hear of someone getting somewhere, put my deposit down in may!

Bare frames always look too small.

I thought my Banshee was the wrong size when I first took it out of the box 🙂

Sounds like it'll be a good looking hardtail!

@boxwithawindow

Is Luke in the U.K. looking after your order from May now?

Mine had literally nothing happening until he got involved and did the bikecad detail / confirmed the rest of the spec with me. After that he put it into the build queue and it’s just been a case of waiting until it gets to the front for the build to start.

Maybe yours is the other frame to be finished prior to the shipment - unless that’s @justaname ‘s frame 🤷‍♂️

I've seen pics of the front triangle of my frame painted and finished so I think it probably is done. I've just not seen it put together yet. My deposit was paid at the very end of June if that means anything at all?

Hopefully its all coming to a close now though and we'll have frames in our hands soon. Can't wait to have the frame, but the wait and comms have been pretty painful. I was told 8-10 weeks from deposit it'd be with me, but they've missed every single date they've given me so far.

To be honest if they'd told me that it would be 6 months up front I'd have been fine with it. Its the constant missed deadlines that they are offering that's grating a little now.

I'm sure it'll all work out for the best in the end though

It’s the communication and setting of expectations that has been the issue.

Clearly the move of factory due to Covid has been an issue, as has a period where they struggled to get gas (also due to Covid). Both completely understandable, but not communicated. I found out both from hearsay on forums (Pinkbike mostly), not from Marino Peru or U.K.

Hopefully we all end up with frames that are built properly with no major errors for a decent price at the end of this!

If not I may as well have bought a Stanton Switchback or Pipedream Moxie (albeit within budget it would have been 4130 rather than 725 and they wouldn’t quite have hit the numbers I was after).

Looks lovely. 🙂

I agree, no problem waiting I just want to know how long I'm waiting for.

Luke has been involved for a few months now, I had a photo of my headtube being engraved about two months ago and I was told it was being built three weeks ago but nothing from Marino in two months. Times are very strange though so I do understand.

I'm sure there will be something soon or I may just decide to cough up a bit more and have Walty make it in Ti.

Haha, I wouldn’t hold your breath on Waltly -I emailed them several times and they didn’t ever reply. I’d even filled in the quote sheet from their website, but nothing.

Curtis would be worth a shout if you’re happy to up your budget. For the same cost as the AM7 standard geo they’ll change some of the angles / measurements for you. Also it’s 853.

I live close to btr and curtis and both said they would build me what I want but it's a bit of an experiment for me and can't really throw £1500+ at the frame though it's worth every penny.

I've already had a quote from walty and found them to be quite responsive but then again that was in July.

That’s weird - Waltly completely ignored me - that was at the start of July too!

I got a "hope your doing OK?“ email from Waltly at the start of lockdown and was really pleased with the frame I had built a while ago so I can't recommend them highly enough.

My Marino frame was ordered around 3 weeks ago, can’t wait to build it for next winter then!! At what point did you pick what is engraved on the head tube?

Engraving is an extra on the order form.

If you selected it then they will be in touch about colour and graphics etc...

This - you pay the extra for it and select the option on the order form.

My frame has that extra, post mount rather than is mount, all cables internal, tapered headtube and 725 rather than 4130 I think.

Literally only got the final detail of the headtube badge nailed down last week after they asked for a better image / file to work with. I think they’ve done a great job on it in the end - better than I expected.

So has anyone that was expecting their frame to be shipped this week been asked for a payment yet? From what I was told back in September I was expecting photos of the completed frame and a request for the outstanding amount prior to shipment. I've not had that yet so its starting to feel like another week slipping by without much progress.

I'm beginning to think of asking for my deposit back at this point.

I messaged Luke and threatened the same, perhaps if you threaten to call it off too then they might take us a bit more seriously.

I'm sure with all the evidence of poor communication and broken promises paypal would side with me.

I think it will be a year or more from initial quote before I see mine.

Nope - I haven’t seen the fully finished frame pics yes and it’s been quiet today. No request for further funds since my deposit.

Not convinced it will ship this week - but someone else I know has been told the shipment should hit the UK on the 26th November. So I wasn’t going to chase any further unless I haven’t heard anything else by the end of next week.

I saw they put a load of pics up on instagram and Facebook earlier from which my frame seems suspiciously absent. I've been waiting pretty much 3 weeks now just for a photo of my completed frame.They told me it was completed BTW.

I may be being very cynical at this point but it really feels like I'm being taken for a ride (not in a good way either!).

I don't hold out much hope of them hitting any date they offer any more. Frankly it's starting to leave a pretty sour taste for what was meant to be a bit of a treat having never totally specced my own frame before. Monday is when I send out a chasing email to them, this Mondays mail will probably be pretty blunt and may well end in a cancellation.

My patience is at its limit I think.

Ordered my frame the start of September.
Went into it fully expecting the lead times to be overly optimistic due to the world being a little manic right now. Happily cut them some slack although do agree a few more updates (even if it isnt good news) would be nice.
Much worse things happening right now so the excitement of new bike day would be good but can understand delays...

When I ordered mine luke insisted it was definiatly a 6 week lead time still. I clearly took that with a massive pinch of salt!
I would like my frame in January ideally but I’m probably more likely to win the lottery with out buying a ticket!
I sort of wish I ordered something else to be honest. Not sure when anyone else will have any stock of anything though

You're right but I ordered my frame in April and I have been very patient.

When did you order @marksnook? I put my deposit down at the end of June and was told 8-10 weeks. Clearly they are no where near that, I'm almost at 21 weeks now.

Must be a framebuilder thing. I ordered from myself. Me promised me it would be 6 weeks and ready for the Alps in summer. I just checked dates on some photos:

I made my curved seat tube 27th May 2018.

The first unpainted bike photo was 13th May 2019.

Luckily I don't make a living from this..... 🙂

@justaname just checked emails, it was only 4 weeks ago! Judging by what you are all saying getting it in January is not very realistic is it?! How can they still claim its 6 weeks lead time?!
Should have bought a moxie!

They shouldn’t be claiming 6 weeks now. Realistically 3-4 months if they’ve resolved the gas and factory location issues. Mines going to be 5 months if it gets here the week after next.

They’re not shipping frames over individually when they’re ready anymore - they’re gathering them up in bulk and shipping. Makes sense but some people are going to wait longer as a result.

How much is shipping these days? It was a large chunk of the overall price for me

It was $110 when I ordered in July but I think it’s changed now as bulk shipment is cheaper then individual shipment m.

I think I paid the same for individual shipment , in theory it should be quite a bit cheaper if they're bulk shipping now. Although I guess it then needs sorting by someone this end and posting individually.

I ordered a frame (along with 3 others, for friends), in February, paid deposit, reasonable communication at first including pictures of almost complete frames, then nothing for last few months.

If they have covid issues I would understand, but had zero communication recently.

@duner

Have you contacted Luke at Marino UK? He might be able to track the orders down for you and find out where they are.

Looks like the frame is finished and on route to the U.K. (maybe).

Doesn’t look like the routing is quite as I discussed and I can’t work out how the dropper routing goes but guess I’ll see when it arrives. Pretty happy with how it looks except maybe the internal routing pipes. Might need a bit of a file before paint perhaps.

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That looks tidy, I was weirdly going to look for this thread this morning as I got an email overnight from Luke asking me to clarify puny colours. It had a photo of a frame that looked like mine attached!
If it is my frame fair play i take it all back 😂
I’m between raw and some sort of grey colour. Exciting I know..

Here's one I built for a customer last week. Tidy work

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@bikerevivesheffield

That looks tidy and a nice spec! Most people have gone longer / slacker / bigger fork travel than mine. I’m just aiming at a fun bit stable trail bike with 140mm fork.

Is that frame clear coated or has it been left totally raw? Either way a brave choice as I’ve seen a number of clearcoated steel frames from different manufacturers corrode under clearcoat.

@marksnook - is your frame being painted in Peru or in the UK? I think raw is subject to rust but grey could look really good. Like the below colour with nice coloured decals on it

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Think it must be in for painting in Peru. I’m leaning on grey. Yeah any raw will always corrode a bit. I quite like that look though!

Edit, the ribble in that photo is a nice grey, not sure if I want a darker or lighter grey. Just waiting for the Marino colour chart to come through!

Ah interesting. So when Luke says he’s waiting for tracking details that probably isn’t strictly true if your frame isn’t even painted yet and you haven’t had the colour chart to pick from 🤷‍♂️

The communication leaves a little bit to be desired it would seem.....

What communication is that then?

Even Luke has stopped responding now.

@boxwithawindow

Luke replied yesterday on messenger to something I sent him a few days ago. Pictures of my completed frame and saying it’s all packed. Apparently they’ll have tracking visibility of the batch of frames coming ‘any day now’.

I guess he means once all the frames are finished - assuming it’s just one frame left to paint that is.

I chose my colour after looking at some completed builds on the Marino Instagram page, I just asked for him to match one of them. I went bright yellow, a friend calls it the Steel Canary